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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We are only hearing Larla's side of the story.  And there have been a lot of questions asked here about the situation that she hasn't answered, so it is difficult to say what should be done.

Just glancing back through the last page or so for questions:

Does Thelma have any other siblings? Any other nieces or nephews or godchildren?
Who is the executor of the will?
What caused Thelma to write her will the way she did?

It would be great if Larla would show this thread to Mary and ask her to post and answer some of the questions people have been asking about what was going on between her and her mother.

Mary and Roy should at least consult with a lawyer to find out if there are any grounds to contest the will. If everyone in the family cooperates and works toward doing the right thing, it will hopefully all work out. [/quote]

Why does any of this matter? Thelma clearly stipulated in her will that she wanted Larla to inherit the house. Honoring Thelma's wishes, as indicated in her will, is the right thing to do. [/quote]

All those things matter because they go to giving more information about Thelma's state of mind at the time she wrote this will. The OP is not a psychologist. She has essentially stated that she does not know much about her own cousin's mental health and motivations for her actions, so I don't expect that she really knows what was going on in Thelma's mind five years ago.

I am not a lawyer, but I spent a lot of time recently talking to an elderly relative at a family reunion. He told me about a meeting he had with his lawyer because he was thinking about leaving a smaller proportion of his estate to one of his three children. Not totally disinherit him, just leave less to that child because he was unhappy about some bad life choices that child had made. (The son had cheated on his wife, an act that the dad found reprehensible.)

The lawyer advised him that he needed to be very clear in his will as to why he was leaving so much less to the one child because otherwise, the will would be wide open to being challenged. He was told that because the majority of wills indicate that assets should be divided fairly equally among children, that he would have to put in writing his reasons for what he was doing if he wanted the will to stand up in court. He ended up going with a more standard division of his assets so that there would not be discord left among his children.

What does the lawyer who wrote the will have to say about Thelma's statements at the time the will was written? It was only five years ago, so he or she is likely to have notes on file from the discussions with Thelma about how she wished her will to be written.

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